But how do you take a cold shower? If you just jump into cold water, you’ll be miserable. There’s a good technique that minimize the unpleasantness and actually maximizes the benefit you’ll get, because you’ll be able to stick with it better.

Start with a normal, hot shower.

Shampoo your hair and rinse normally.

Soap up in the hot water.

Then, turn the temperature to a low luke-warm. Nothing that you’d identify as cold, just neither cold nor warm.

Rinse off in this low luke-warm water. This gives your body time to adjust to the temperature.

Now, turn your back to the water.

Turn the temperature down slightly, just a few degrees cooler.

Wait about 30-40 seconds. You can count off one-one thousand, two-one thousand, or you can sing the ABCs.

Repeat 7 and 8, as many times as you can. I can now go about 6 cycles of gradually reducing the temperature.

I usually stop the cycle after my teeth start chattering while singing the ABCs.

The reason this process works is:

You still get to enjoy a hot shower to start.

You gradually reduce the temperature so that it is never an unpleasant shock.

By the time the water temperature is getting really cold, your upper back and neck are already somewhat numb, so you hardly notice the temperature change.

Using this method, you should easily be able to spend 5-6 minutes in an increasingly cold shower.

I found the first two days were terrible, but after that, I don’t mind them near as much. I take a 2-3 minute hot shower, and now just turn it full cold and back in. I wait 2-3 minutes of it just on my back, and about the time my buns go numb, I turn around and rinse off my front. Back and forth once or twice and it’s time to get out.

It’s important to remember to not get tense. I found that if I was relaxed, I suffered less than when I was tense and rigid.

Ap: I don’t wait outside: I am waiting 30 seconds, and then turning the water colder and colder. Sure, you could just go straight to the coldest temperature, but personally that’s pretty dang unpleasant. (I also live in Portland, and the water is pretty cold here in the winter.) By waiting a few seconds, and then turning the water cold in intervals, it’s never quite so shockingly cold all at once.

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William Hertling is the author of Avogadro Corp, AI Apocalypse, The Last Firewall, and The Turing Exception, as well as a web strategist and speaker. More about me.